Just before the Thanksgiving holiday in 1959, a federal official announced that the nation’s supply of cranberries was contaminated with a cancer causing pesticide. The alarm spread quickly as the public reacted to widespread reports on television, radio and in the newspapers. Cranberry sales plummeted and millions of families went without the traditional dish.

The alarm was unjustified. A few weeks later, scientists explained that laboratory rats had been given megadoses of Aminotriazole, amounts equivalent to a human eating 15,000 pounds of cranberries a day for many years. The public apologies came too late for an industry nearly ruined by the bureaucratic decision to save the public from an exaggerated hazard.

When the hysteria faded, one thing had become crystal clear. Our ability to disseminate information exceeded our ability to assess its accuracy. And our capacity for alarm exceeded our ability to assess risk. We had taken our first steps into a vast unexplored region, into a wilderness without signposts or landmarks, into a chasm between what we perceive as the truth and what is true……….Read more

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